The Teen Brigade : Junior High School Students Stand Out as Members of California Cadet Corps

Col. Larry Morden, dressed in military green pants and shirt, his khaki-colored hat perched at a jaunty angle, strides through the corridors of Pacoima Junior High School, ignoring the snickers of some students and smartly returning the salutes of others.

He’s going to be a few minutes late for his last class, the meeting of his unit of the California Cadet Corps, but he’s not worried. He knows that by the time he gets there his student leaders will have the class lined up in neat formations, quiet and standing at attention. And he’s right.

“This is the only class that can run itself,” Morden said as he watched the group of about 70 seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders go through their paces. Dressed in blue pants (or skirts for some of the girls), khaki shirts and blue ascot-like scarfs, at first glance it’s easy to mistake the cadets for Boy Scouts. But the military bearing, the way they stand at attention, the way they bellow, “Sir, yes, sir!” bespeaks the military influence.

Morden’s group is from one of nine San Fernando Valley junior high schools involved in the California Cadet Corps, a leadership program created in 1911 by the military and the state Department of Education. The corps has 3,500 students in 54 schools across the state, divided into six brigades determined by geographical boundaries.

Los Angeles, because of its size, is broken into two brigades, the Valley’s 7th Brigade, with about 700 students in nine schools, and the 8th Brigade, with 1,050 members in schools in the eastern part of the city.

Morden, a former Marine, has been CCC commandant at Pacoima since Los Angeles schools joined the program in 1976. He believes he is the only original cadet teacher left in the Los Angeles district.

His first class consisted of 30 students, mostly handpicked from his math classes. Despite anti-military sentiment on campuses at the time, he said, he had no trouble finding recruits.

Today, he has an unusually high number of cadets--74, 22 of them girls, with a waiting list of wanna-bes. He could easily take twice as many students, he said, but there is not enough classroom space.

As brigade commander, Morden, who also teaches computer classes at Pacoima, supervises all nine schools in the Valley brigade--Bancroft, Frost, Fulton, Millikan, Olive Vista, Pacoima, Sepulveda, Sun Valley and Virgil.

Although the program is aimed at junior high students, many of the cadets continue with it in high school, returning to become staff officers on the brigade level and helping out the younger cadets.

“They run the meetings, plan the curriculum, do the paper work, everything. I hate to say this, but they really don’t need me,” Morden said.

“There is no other class in the school system where the student directly applies what he learns,” said Col. Robert Freeman, a history teacher at El Sereno Junior High School in Los Angeles and commandant of the 8th Brigade.

The CCC, whose membership once peaked at 8,000, has had its ups and downs in terms of enrollment and popularity. During the ‘60s and ‘70s, when anti-war feelings were high, the corps’ popularity faltered, and in 1982 the group nearly played taps when the state cut corps funding from the budget.

The brigades struggled for three years, making do with tattered, hand-me-down uniforms, surviving on momentum and volunteers, until state funds were again provided to revitalize the program. Girls were admitted in 1976, and today 28% of the students are female and several of the school commandants, or teachers, are women. The state provides the uniforms, students pay no dues and anyone is eligible.

Meeting every day as a regular class taken instead of physical education, the CCC has five teaching objectives--citizenship, leadership, education, military concepts and patriotism. The class is taught by a credentialed teacher who has either military or CCC training, and lessons range from first aid and leadership principles to map and compass reading. Community service is stressed, and popular projects include the Marine Corps’ annual Toys for Tots drive, charity bike-a-thons, an anti-graffiti campaign and helping out at school and community functions.

Besides leadership, Morden said he believes one of the most important and useful things students learn is first aid.

“We are a vital part of the disaster planning on campus,” Morden said. When the big quake hits Los Angeles, he added without a trace of doubt in his voice, “We’ll be ready.”

Cadet Monica Baquedano was ready last May when a student stabbed a teacher in the back at Olive Vista Junior High School in Sylmar. Calling on first-aid training learned in her CCC class, Baquedano quickly took charge in the classroom. While other students were screaming, Baquedano 14, calmed the teacher, leaving the knife in place and keeping the woman sitting to elevate the wound and prevent shock, and sent someone for help.

“She calmly and maturely took control of a situation that I think even few adults could handle,” said CCC adviser Lt. Col. Diana Hoffman.

The military aspect, while there, is not always heavily stressed, Morden said, and most students have no plans to enlist. However, of the five top leaders in Morden’s current group, several come from military families and all are planning to join the service after high school.

But leadership is the word that consistently pops up when students are asked why they joined and what they have learned.

“This program helped me learn organizational techniques and gave me leadership training,” said Jay Frizell, who joined the CCC in 1981 at Olive Vista Junior High. A business major at Cal State Northridge, Frizell is part of Morden’s volunteer brigade staff.

“It’s a special program, not a military program,” added Capt. Mike Ryan, 21, a student at Cal State Los Angeles, who assists Freeman in the 8th Brigade. “It’s just organized that way because it’s easier for the kids to recognize the structure and follow it. It’s 100% geared towards leadership.”

Cmdr. Greg Bjork, 14, who came to Pacoima Junior High School specifically because it had a CCC program and his home school did not, said he joined mainly to learn leadership skills. Another reason students join, said Sgt. Maj. Ben Del Real, 15, is because “they want to be part of a group, they want to belong.”

For example, three cadets who are being praised with a hearty “hoo-rah, hoo-rah, hoo-rah” chant for collecting Toys for Tots donations blush at the praise but admit they are pleased with the peer recognition.

“Some kids like it because it’s a school program and they can do it during the school day,” added Ruben Mendoza, 14, the unit’s supply officer. “It’s fun. In the beginning you start at the bottom, but then you work your way up” the ranks.

For Arek Wdowiak, 14, the unit’s administration officer, the corps has allowed him “to do things that your parents wouldn’t let you do, like hiking and camping. The corps gives you a big boost in morale. You’re willing to try things you might not have before.”

Besides learning “to be responsible” and “to cooperate better with people,” Wdowiak said he also learned, “Don’t be a showoff” in wielding high rank in the corps. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Yeah, no matter how high you are, there’s always somebody higher,” added Del Real.

Pauline Ward has seen both her sons go through the CCC and is so impressed with the program that she is training to be an assistant commandant. Cadets, she said, “learn how to conduct themselves. They learn control. They certainly learn manners.”

At least once a week, the cadets wear their uniforms to school and take their share of ribbing. But only for a while.

Morden noted that “the first uniform day is a hard one for new cadets,” because the other students, especially incoming seventh-graders, aren’t used to the sight and razz them. But it’s not only the students who gawk. The first time he wore his uniform, Morden said with a grin, “I got teased more by the teachers.”

As the semester progresses and the students earn more and more ribbons, adding pizazz to the uniforms, the other students begin to take notice and “some feel jealous when they see the uniforms,” noted Wdowiak, who regularly sends photos of himself in uniform to proud relatives in Poland.

“The first couple of times you wear the uniform, it’s embarrassing,” admitted John Brawdy, a 17-year-old senior at Sylmar High School, who wants to be a Marine. “But then,” he said with a grin, “you look gooood in it.”

Freeman said the corps is often considered a dropout-prevention program. “Sometimes this is their only way out” of trouble, Ryan said.

Freeman added, “If we can save one or two, we feel we’ve done a good job.”

It worked for Brawdy. Joining the corps in junior high, he said, “calmed me down” and helped keep him out of trouble.

Sometimes students drop the class or are asked to leave.

“They’ve got to be willing to play the game,” Morden explained, gesturing toward the cadets marching in military formation. “This isn’t for everyone, but I think every school should offer it.”